According to its website, in a letter authored by CEO Chris Palusky, Bethany Christian Services says it faced a legal and moral dilemma: After losing legal challenges across the country, Bethany made the decision to surrender in order to continue helping the tens of thousands of children under its care.
In particular, Palusky writes, Bethany’s faith-based foster care program in Michigan faced “imminent closure” due to a court settlement there and similarly, in Philadelphia, the city stopped Bethany’s ability to operate in that city, too.
“Kids had to go somewhere else than Bethany foster homes,” the CEO wrote, “and it broke our hearts.”
Bethany’s decision has been reported widely, including by The New York Times, which reported in a March 1 story that Palusky announced the decision in an email to the agency’s 1,500 staff members.
“We will now offer services with the love and compassion of Jesus to the many types of families who exist in our world today,” he wrote in the email. “We’re taking an ‘all hands of deck’ approach where all are welcome.”
According to the Times article, Bethany is the largest Protestant-based adoption and foster care agency in the U.S., where it operates 32 offices nationwide that oversaw more than 4,500 foster care placements or adoptions in 2019.
Reacting to Bethany’s announcement, Peter LaBarbera of Americans for Truth About Homosexuality says the adoption agency should drop “Christian” from its name.
“If you’re willing to put children in a home that is intentionally motherless or intentionally fatherless, in the name of Christianity, because Bethany’s got Christian in its name,” he tells One News Now, “then you are imprinting children in an immoral-led household in the name of Jesus, and that’s just dead wrong.”
What is a ‘family’ anyway?
Homosexuality is recognized as sinful behavior by the world’s three largest religions, Christianity, Judaism and Islam, which consider it a Satanic perversion of God’s design for human sexuality and, related to that, the raising of children.
Beyond those religious beliefs, in towns and villages far removed from Abrahamic teachings, the father-mother household has been recognized as fundamental for civilization for thousands of years.
That normal family structure was first called the “nuclear family” by academics in the 1920s, who were referring to the “nucleus” of the atom to describe the family structure, according to Merriam-Webster.
During the 1960s, the children of “Baby Boomers” began to openly question the usefulness of the nuclear family. That change was reflected by the TV: The wise but stern father delivering advice was eventually replaced by a doddering fool delivering punch lines.
The redefinition of family has arrived much later. As recently as 2008 Barack Obama claimed he believed that God created marriage for one man and one woman. Only in recent years, as Bethany has witnessed, legislatures, courts, and the media agreed with homosexual activists and their attorneys that “family” can mean almost anything including even three “dads” on a birth certificate (pictured below).
In the Michigan court settlement, for example, which Palusky cited, the ACLU announced in 2019 the State of Michigan agreed it will require state-contracted agencies to accept same-sex couples despite religious objections.
According to the ACLU:
This is a victory for our clients, other same-sex couples in Michigan, and most importantly, the children in Michigan’s child welfare system, who will now have access to more loving and qualified families.
Bethany faced ‘reality’
According to the Times story, Bethany made its policy official in 2007 with a statement that says “God’s design for the family is a covenant and lifelong marriage of one man and one woman.”
According to the Times story, Bethany began loosening its requirements in states where it faced legal requirements to the point where it was working with homosexual and lesbian couples in 12 states by 2020, and the statement from 2007 was dropped in January.
“The reality is that the government runs the foster care system,” Palusky wrote 14 years later, “and we cannot serve children in foster care without contracting with the state.”
“The reality is that God created a mom and dad system, and that’s how you raise children,” LaBarbera counters. “And that social engineering that is happening is at the expense of children.”
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Copyright American Family News. Reprinted with permission.
“Peter LaBarbera of Americans for Truth About Homosexuality says the adoption agency should drop “Christian” from its name”. Peter you are a hero for standing up for what is right. It is just like the Boy Scouts, allowing homosexuals to be leaders and look what happened, young boys were raped. Our Country needs to wake up. The sheep in our society are a disgrace. The sheep are capitulators.
Castrated christians are just what we need running organizations. Put those little ones in a hell bound household.
AND It really makes you wonder, about the SANITY OF THE JUDGES who kept ruling Against the org…
If ” Bethany Christian Services” caved into the the Democrat LGBTQ agenda on this issue, then they should not call themselves Christians.
Would these people also surrender and take the mark of the beast if they were persecuted?
Matthew 7:21-23
21 “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. 22 Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and in your name drive out demons and in your name perform many miracles?’ 23 Then I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!’
The exact Bible verse I was thinking about while reading the article.
Appeasement. It’s never going to work. It may, or may not, buy your organization a short reprieve. But that is the very most that can be hoped for. The agenda is to destroy and utterly obliterate all Christian influence in America, (and in the world for that matter). They will be back until you are gone completely.
They don’t care about the children. They don’t care about the parents. They are not the least bit concerned for the destruction they are causing. It’s simply 100% agenda, whatever the cost.
Stand now or forever relinquish any possibility of standing again.
Absolutely true. When you must choose between obeying God’s law, and obeying man’s law, real Christians will choose obeying God’s law every time, regardless of the consequences. Therefore, bethany “Christian” adoption services should be FORCED to take the words “Christian”, and “bethany” out of their name. The leaders of this organization will face an angry God on judgement day.
Matthew 16:26
26 What good will it be for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul? Or what can anyone give in exchange for their soul?
Moral failure is no platform for success………..William
Typical bowing to the political correctness. If this is truly a “Christian” organization, they would rather just close their doors rather then subject the children to a biblically defined ungodly lifestyle
OR at least wait till they’ve handed the kids off to OTHER foster orgs, so as to NOT just turf them out on their own…
these queer nazis are bullying there agenda and forcing there lifestyle on america as normal.
Either you are Christian or not. Christians went to the lions centuries ago rather then denounce their God.
You cannot serve both God and mammon. You will love one and hate the other. It seems to me that by opting to turn away from the godly definition of marriage and family in order to keep your doors open you are making a very clear choice between God and mammon.
So the left can’t make us stop believing so they are trying to make it impossible to practice our faith. Bethany should have stood strong on this because without their Christian convictions they are nothing, but another secular foster care agency. So what will be next, requiring them to deny Christ as their savior so as not to alienate the atheist children. This will not end until Christians revolt and refuse to worship the liberal god.
This is disgusting. Just like what the teachers in our public schools push on the children. America really is going to Hell.
Anyone or any organization can name themselves whatever they want. Just because their name has “Christian” in it does not by any stretch of the imagination mean they are actually Christian. Cannot serve God and man. They have made their choice and this is where the non-christians who live immoral lives will go to gain innocent children for their own selfishness.
And we know what will happen next, i.e., same-sex couples (and maybe throuples) will go rushing to Bethany, demanding to foster or adopt, just to prove a point.
“A little leaven leaveneth the whole bunch.” Agreeing to sinful practices negates their “Christian ” witness.
The Bible describes the homosexual / lesbian lifestyle as an abomination to God. That is not just a small sin, but rather an blatant attack against God himself, and his perfect design of man & woman coming together in marriage. To call yourself a “Christian” organization, and then to knowingly assist in putting innocent children in homes where these abomination sins are taking place is one of the worst sinful compromises Christians can participate in!!
This is allowing the evil Government to dictate whether or not Christians will be faithful to the clear teachings in the Holy Scriptures. To do so is to is to place higher priority on obedience to man, rather than obedience to God & His written Word. (Tons of warnings about this in Scripture!)
It is impossible for the Bethany organization continue as a Christian organization, regardless what they call themselves, they are fooling no one who is a true believer. Their only recourse is to repent & go back to the Biblical platform they used to operate under, or give up on even pretending to be a Christian organization, and continue embracing the wicked secular philosophy.
There is never a “good” way to cooperate with an evil idea.